O’donnell calls Brexiteers ‘snake oil sellers’

The Tories want freedom from the customs union, but they haven’t explained what they’d use it for

THE former head of the Civil Service has accused Brexiteers of “selling snake oil” as a row over the impartiality of Whitehall officials intensified.

Lord O’donnell, the former cabinet secretary, said claims by Jacob Reesmogg that civil servants at the Treasury were “fiddling the figures” to show Britain would be worse off outside the EU were “completely crazy”.

An argument over the impartiality of the Civil Service was sparked last week after leaked post-brexit forecasts showed that the UK’S economic growth would be lower after the country leaves the European Union.

In response to Mr Rees-mogg’s claims, Lord O’donnell told ITV’S Peston On Sunday: “I think that’s completely crazy. The truth is civil servants operate by the Civil Service code.

“The values are honesty, objectivity, integrity, impartiality. Their job is to look at the evidence and present it as best they can, analyse the uncertainties... but that’s what they do, they’re objective and impartial.

“And I think what you find is that tends to get accepted very nicely when it agrees with someone’s prior beliefs, but actually, when someone doesn’t like the answer, quite often they decide to shoot the messenger.”

Lord O’donnell added: “Of course if you are selling snake oil, you don’t like the idea of experts testing your products and I think that’s what we’ve got, this backlash against evidence and experts is because they know where the experts will go.” Lord Turnbull, another former Whitehall mandarin, accused Brexiteers of using tactics similar to those adopted by Right-wing German nationalists in the Thirties.

It’s 18 months since the country voted and – forgive me – I’ve forgotten what exactly Brexit is for. Judging by the loudest voices we’ve heard recently, led by Jacob Rees-mogg, its main purpose is to inflict a wounding defeat on the Treasury and to discredit our Civil Service, an institution that used to be rather a source of British pride.

This week the Cabinet will, supposedly, decide what kind of Brexit it wants. We will then learn whether it is an exercise in damage limitation and scapegoating or a political project intended to reshape the country. That we’ve had to wait this long to find out is, of course, shameful, but, as Sir Humphrey would say, we are where we are.

The argument is at last coalescing around a specific point, namely the question of whether to hitch ourselves to the EU customs union, either by staying in it or mimicking it, in order to avoid raising costs and administrative burdens for half of Britain’s trade. Brexiteers are against doing so. So far, their main argument seems to be that leaving the customs union won’t be that bad, or that the people who say it will be bad are devious quislings. This isn’t a very strong argument.

I voted Remain, but even I can make a better case for leaving than that. Leaving the customs union has daunting costs. But staying in it permanently, beyond a transition, means outsourcing most of our trade policy to institutions that have no regard to our interests. It means giving away our biggest bargaining chip – access to our market – in any potential future trade deals.

Most importantly, it means shackling ourselves to EU regulatory policy, since a common customs area requires common product standards. Even if at first this leaves us free to strike trade deals for services, our most important sector, the EU’S reach is likely to expand over time, by, for example, taking in regulations on cars’ use of data or altering energy policy.

None of this, though, is really enough, because it doesn’t answer the main point: given the costs of leaving the customs union, what would it allow us to do that we can’t do already? And on this question, there has so far only been one voice saying anything of substance. Michael Gove has laid out the principles for a post-brexit agricultural policy, based on environmental impact rather than land ownership, that would not be possible inside the EU. It’s an alluring vision – and one with costs and benefits on which reasonable people can make a judgment.

However lovely they are, though, wildflower meadows are not enough to carry Brexit. We need to hear about ideas affecting the big building blocks of the economy, like greater freedom to develop new drugs, a revitalised British trade policy that would boost services exports and lower prices, a radical new regime to give individuals full ownership of their data, democratising the most valuable commodity of the future, or an overhaul of all government procurement that embraces transparency and encourages infrastructure investment.

A government that could be trusted to take us out of the customs union would be one fizzing with energy and ideas for how to become a nimble, free-trading, autonomous nation, rather than one filled with “paperclip people and bag-carriers”, in the words of one MP. It would be a government with the confidence to commission and publish rigorous analysis and to argue its case if it disagrees with economic models, rather than prevaricating and making shabby attacks on civil servants. If this isn’t a government the Tories can deliver, then they also can’t deliver Brexit.

Recently, I visited two businesses that trade across borders: a snack manufacturer and an agricultural equipment maker. Tayto, a Northern Irish crisp-maker, imports supplies like machinery, potatoes, onion powder and cooking oil from all over the world. As he tries to plan for the next year, its chief executive Paul Allen has the mortgages of his 1,500 staff on his mind. Because of Brexit, he doesn’t know where he will be able to buy his supplies, how he’ll get permission to bring them into the country, how much they will cost, in what currency, what the tariffs and regulations on them will be and whether he will be able to hire seasonal workers to process them. The potato seed he hopes to use for next year’s crisps is already being developed in the Netherlands and must be planted soon. All of this, he said, is “very, very stressful”.

Across the border in Ireland,

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PE Services, a much smaller business run by Killian Cawley, makes its money by selling kit like car wash machinery, animal feeders and environmental clean-up equipment to customers in the UK and Ireland. When Mr Cawley woke up to the news of Brexit in June 2016, he felt “physically sick”, he said. A third of his revenues are in sterling, which dropped like a stone.

When I met him, however, he had shaken off the panic and was brandishing an 18-page document: his plan for all Brexit scenarios. He had some help in the form of advice and roundtables organised by an Irish government agency and is now scouting out potential new suppliers and matching up his sterling inflows and outflows by hiring contractors in Northern Ireland. Already, the labour shortage brought about by falling migration is spurring demand for his automatic car hosing devices. “Brexit brings its issues but it also brings opportunities,” he said. “You’ve got to have a positive attitude.”

It’s extremely hard to see what people like Mr Cawley and Mr Allen have to gain from last week’s attack on our civil servants. If Brexiteers want to win the argument about the customs union, in government and Parliament, they need to remember the enormous strain it will place on people like Mr Allen at Tayto. Platitudes about “global Britain” are not an answer to these demands.

Voters, MPS and businesses need to hear the reasoning, the evidence, the innovative new policies we could pursue and the ways that government will help the country navigate this change. Rather than harping on about misery-guts mandarins, Brexiteers should take Mr Cawley’s advice and get a positive attitude. Otherwise, they will deserve to fail.